Thursday, February 16, 2017

Staunton, February 16 – Speaking to the
annual meeting of sociologists his Levada Center has just convened, Lev Gudkov,
its director, says that in his view, “the only means which will permit the
powers that be to keep their legitimacy in the eyes of society is an appeal to
the totalitarian ‘great’ Soviet past.”

·“The
Crimean mobilization and the massive patriotic upsurge has ended. Russians in
2017 expect a growth in worries and disappointments.”

·Putin’s
standing in the polls reflects the impact of state television which is viewed
by about the same percentage as the percentage approving the Kremlin leader.

·“Politics
in recent years has led to the appearance in [Russia] of a young generation
with harsh illiberal views … [and] the formation of an ideology of state patriotism
which blocks the evolution of the country toward development and liberal
values.”

·The
elite “is becoming ever more conservative and primitive and society is
withdrawing into depression.” If there isn’t a breakthrough following Trump’s
election, Putin’s rating will eventually but not immediately fall as will that
of the authorities in general.

·Russian
society is moving toward “something close to the late Soviet variant of its
existence, that is, toward the total domination of the state over the economy
and personal life and as a result to the demoralization of society.”

·Only
two groups retain any optimism: the young because that is their nature, and
those close to the top because of the advantages they have.

·Young
Russians who might have been expected to promote liberalization are “now even
more totalitarian in their views than their opposite numbers in Soviet times.”
They know little history and consequently a turnover in the elites may not lead
to breakthrough to democracy.

·Democratic
institutions have discredited themselves in the eyes of Russians, and now
people don’t want to have anything to do with politics or with the institutions
that might represent them and their views.

Other participants amplified some of these
points. Mark Urnov of the Higher School of Economics reported on a comparative
study of students in Russian universities and their counterparts at Princeton.
He found that the Russian students were more concerned about their country
becoming a world power and were more authoritarian in their views.

Sociologists Denis Volkov and Stepan
Goncharov found in the course of a study of independent and patriotic media
that “the more informed audience is not always the more likely to have
opposition views.

Sociologist Aleksey Levinson said that
increasingly Russians see themselves as poor people living in a rich country
and that they do not now have any gratitude to Putin for the “fat” years before
the current crisis.

And political scientist Dmitry Orlov said that
he doesn’t see a real interest in articulating a formal state ideology.“The Crimean mobilization simplified the
argues of the sides in that dispute and increased aggressiveness in society,
but the powers that be recognize this and since last summer there has been a
move away from this aggression.”